Yes, I agree. The US has gone too far approving patents (be it biological
material, ideas, software, whatever).
A few days ago, I read about several US based e-mail softw. companies who
would argue on whether the "Sorry, you dont have any new mail" phrase would
be patented/trademarked or I dont know what ... this was amazing, indeed.
However, although we all like the GPL ... code may well be intellectual
property. It should be an injustice to expect programmers to go hungry and
work for free. I see all of the programmers who work under the GPL as a
kind of "knowledge-Robin-Hoods", altruistic guys some of which go hungry
... it may be a paradox but if the GPL became too successful, it would be a
kind of "dictatorship".
Cheers,
APS
At 17:46 18/10/99 +0000, you wrote:
>... the United States of America is the only country where a
>mathematical fact can be patented.
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